Descriptions made in this section merely provide background information of embodiments of the present invention and do not constitute conventional art.
In general, a wireless network has a point-to-point topology or a star, that is, point-to-multipoint, topology, but a wireless network which has a mesh, that is, multipoint-to-multipoint, structure like a wired network has been attracting attention recently.
A wireless mesh network may be easily extended without connection to a wired network and has resultant merits in flexibility and extendability, such as speed and economic efficiency in network establishment, redundancy based on multiple paths, and so on.
In an existing wired network environment, a signal is connected through a repeater or a wireless router referred to as an access point (AP), and all APs are connected in a wired manner.
On the other hand, in a mesh network, wireless communication routers which will serve as antennas like existing wireless communication base stations (BSs) become mesh nodes and wirelessly connect all sections as long as a representative AP is connected in a wired manner. In this way, the structure of a wired mesh network may also be implemented in a wireless network. Thus, a mesh network has which overcomes a limitation of an existing wireless local area network (WLAN) has appeared.
Also, with the development of mobile communication networks and specifications of terminals, a mobile communication terminal has gone beyond the existing scope of a simple communication device or information providing device and become a necessary possession of contemporary people and is evolving into a total entertainment device.
Further, technologies for performing short-range wireless communication between mobile communication terminals close to each other are rapidly developing, and one of the short-range wireless communication technologies is Bluetooth communication.
Bluetooth communication has evolved again and again, and the Bluetooth low energy (BLE) technology (Bluetooth 4.0) is widely being used in smart phones, retail geofencing, mobile payment, and so on. The BLE technology consumes less power than a standard Bluetooth wireless connection.
Also, there is ongoing development of a service method for providing various types of information to a mobile communication terminal of a user through a beacon which uses Bluetooth communication, and cases of constructing a mesh network with a beacon device which uses Bluetooth communication are increasing.
It is possible to access such a wireless mesh network after authentication using only authentication information, such as an authentication key, required to form the mesh network. Accordingly, an unnecessary beacon device may be included in the mesh network, and a security problem and an unexpected service traffic problem may occur.
Consequently, an efficient authentication method for a mesh network in which beacon devices are used is required to set a range of beacon devices wanted by an administrator and determine whether or not a beacon device may access the mesh network.